as far as I know it is a 2" line with a PVC valve. The problem is that I only know where it enter the house and a 10 foot circle where the valve may be.

So far my options are to witch it. Can't hurt to try as long as it is dark and no one can see.

Or get some sort of radar. Where would I get one?

Or just start poking around in the dirt with a stick till I hit it

If it's a PVC valve, then you better get one of these witch doctors out to help you out.


Seriously, the bird's eye view suggestion is a great one.

If you know where it enters the house, dig there. See which direction the pipe runs in and start digging.

water every thing down.

Use a piece of rebar to poke the ground looking for a solid spot.

what wildcat said. i used this to find some drain tiles a time or two.

Call a plumber?

RB,

You would not want to pay what it would take for someone to bring out the radar equipment and find one valve.

Just witch the line as the above people have stated how to do it and you will be OK.

The valve will most likely be at a bend, so when you find where the rods start to indicate that the line is moving off of a straight line, then you will find the valve.

For anyone that says it does not work, then they have most likely not tried it, or did not know how to use the rods correctly.

Most valves are inline on straight runs, actually.

Everyone says it works.

I'm a right-brainer. Explain the science of it for me.

There's no scientific basis to suggest that there is an atmospheric or electrostatic change strong enough in a 2" piece of plastic water pipe buried underground that it could manipulate two wire coat hangers being held roughly four feet above ground.

Im with you Cowtown. I have seen it demonstrated time and time again by my Dad and myself. My brain still does not believe it works but I see it work nevertheless.

I drilled a hole in 2 blocks of wood for "holders" for the L shaped rods. This way they are held consistently loose.

The first time my Dad demonstrated it to me, in disbelief I took the rods and approached the underground line from every angle and it worked every time. I am sure it is even harder to believe if you have a college education with some practical subjects, like physics or other engineering subjects.

I'd love to know the science behind witching as well. I've used it to find buried PVC, so I know it works, but I just can't see why.

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Explain the science of it for me.

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I wish I could but I've never looked into it. Like the rest, I never believed it 'til I actually did it. When I was at UK I used to TA for the surveying class and we used to teach it to the surveying students. It was really fun to teach it because, of course, the students didn't believe it when you demonstrated it. Then, you'd let them try it and some of them would freak out and throw the sticks down.

If you're a non-believer give it a try at your house tonight.

I should note that when I say witchin' I'm talking specifically about using the L-shaped rods to find waterlines. I have no experience with the Y-shaped stick "divining."

I still contend it's more a power of chance and suggestion of the mind than anything else.

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Some of the strongest evidence for dowsing comes from Germany. Tests were done in a barn (Scheune is the German word for barn) and are referred to by J. T. Enright as the "Scheunen" experiments. In 1987 and 1988, more than 500 dowsers participated in more than 10,000 double-blind tests set up by physicists in a barn near Munich. The researchers claim they empirically proved "a real dowsing phenomenon." Jim Enright of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography evaluated the data and concluded that the so-called "real dowsing phenomenon" can reasonably be attributed to chance. His argument is rather lengthy, but here is a taste of it:

The long and the short of it is that dowsing performance in the Scheunen experiments was not reproducible. It was not reproducible inter-individually: from a pool of some 500 self-proclaimed dowsers, the researchers selected for their critical experiments 43 candidates whom they considered most promising on the basis of preliminary testing; but the investigators themselves ended up being impressed with only a few of the performances of only a small handful from that select group. And, even more troublesome for the hypothesis, dowsing performance was not reproducible intra-individually: those few dowsers, who on one occasion or another seemed to do relatively well, were in their other comparable test series usually no more successful than the rest of the "unskilled" dowsers (Enright “Water Dowsing: the Scheunen Experiments,” Naturwissenschaften, vol. 82 1995).

The barn study itself is curious. It seems clearly to have been repudiated by another German study done in 1992 by a group of German scientists and skeptics. The Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) [Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences] set up a three-day controlled test of some thirty dowsers, mostly from Germany. The test was done at Kassel, north of Frankfurt, and televised by a local television station. The test involved plastic pipe buried 50 centimeters in a level field through which a large flow of water could be controlled and directed. On the surface, the position of the pipe was marked with a colored stripe, so all the dowsers had to do was tell whether there was water running through the pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement that they agreed the test was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100% success rate. The results were what one would expect by chance (Randi 1995). Defenders of dowsing do not care for these results, and continue to claim that the barn study provides scientific proof of dowsing.

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Brass rods work best....as to why don't know, but it really does work.....

sorcery, plain and simple.

Tell that to Lord Vader and see what happens to you Cowtown!

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sorcery, plain and simple.

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If I was a master of sorcery, rather then using my power to find buried waterlines I'm pretty sure I'd use it to counter the voodoo that Tech uses to beat A&M in football every freakin' year.

[This message has been edited by WildcatAg (edited 7/23/2008 4:16p).]

brazing rods are a good source for the sticks, another one that can't explain it, but it sure seems to help reduce the area you have to dig up.

CR, quit being such a little girl and go try it instead of criticizing it.

I think the reason you won't try it is because you believe it may work and then there will be some explosion in your brain since you won't be able to explain it to yourself.

Can you shut off the water at the source? If so cut it off, dig up where the pipe comes into the house, cut it, install new valve, problem solved.

Can't shut it off. We have 5 different wells on the place and they are all tied together. They run all over the ranch water livestock. The problem is I am looking for where the house line branches off the main line and the valve in between.

Sorry for rehashing an old topic but I just ran across my divining rods while unpacking some boxes. Here are a couple photos of them. I purchased these from a leak detector place while I was living in Nevada. The actual rods remind me of a cars antennae the way they expand and they are on a bearing so that they are able to rotate smoothly.

I used them quite a bit while working in compressor stations and refineries that didn't have proper as-builts done.

It may require a few passes, but this should find it.


Just kidding.